First-person point of view tells a story through a narrator who uses "I" and takes part in the events, so readers see only what that person knows, notices and chooses to share.
Where the term comes from
The Wikipedia article on narrative mode says a first-person point of view reveals the story through an openly self-referential and participating narrator. It creates a close relationship between narrator and reader by using pronouns such as I and me, and we and us when the narrator belongs to a group. The same article lists it beside second and third person as one of the basic ways to position a storyteller in relation to the story. Merriam-Webster defines point of view more generally as the position from which something is considered.
An example
Here is the same moment from inside Odalys Fenn, a night nurse. "The ward was quiet, which I never trust. I counted the beds twice and told myself I was being careful, though really I was listening for the sound that would tell me which of them had stopped sleeping." We learn her habits, her superstition and her fear in one voice. We do not learn what the patient in bed six is thinking, and we do not learn what the doctor outside the door has already decided. The limit gives the passage its tension.
Common mistakes
- Reporting things the narrator could not know, such as a conversation in another room, without explaining how they learned it.
- Overusing "I felt" and "I saw", which puts a layer of narration between the reader and the scene.
- Making the voice the same as the author's, so that characters in different books sound alike.
- Forgetting when the narrator is telling the story. A narrator looking back from years later knows more than one telling it live, and the tense should show it.
How to check your manuscript
Scan each scene and ask whether the narrator was physically present or could plausibly have been told. Mark every line that reports an inner thought of anyone else and rewrite it as something the narrator observes or infers. Then read three pages aloud and check that the voice has a distinct rhythm, vocabulary and set of concerns. If a reader could swap in another narrator without noticing, the voice needs more of the person in it. For a lot of what makes a voice sharp, the character development guide is a good companion, and the entry on the unreliable narrator covers what happens when the I does not tell the whole truth.
Musael's plan board has a point of view field on every scene, which helps you see at a glance whose I is telling each part of a multi-narrator book.